Week 12 - 49 years 2 months 3 weeks

How do you shift from wanting to figure out who to blame, to taking responsibility for your situation, especially if you didn’t cause the situation?

A couple of weeks ago in this blog, I mentioned I would be writing a whole post about the difference between taking responsibility for a situation and placing blame. And here it is. Before I get into that - two things:

1. You may or may not have noticed that this post came out on Tuesday rather than Monday. The truth is, I was having a hard time getting the words on the page the way I wanted them. Part of it is they just weren't flowing. I felt like I was writing an essay for a college class that I didn’t enjoy, taught by a teacher I didn’t care for. It felt forced, and less like words from my heart and more like words from my mind. That’s not my style. It feels out of integrity, and while I can write that way, I choose not to. I made a conscious choice to forgo my own deadline in favor of producing work that feels like me. Nothing noteworthy happened in my life. There’s no “understandable excuse” for the delay. I just chose to value my creation over my word to post on Mondays.

2. I also want to follow up on a book I mentioned in my ​week 9 post​, called ​Everything is Figureoutable​ by Marie Forleo. I listened to the book on Audible and I truly loved it. I actually bought a copy from ​ThriftBooks​ that I can read over and over. It really resonated with me. You can use the links above to find the post, or check out the book on Amazon or Thirftbooks. I don’t receive any commission or anything, I just loved the book!

Now back to our regularly scheduled blog post!

If I could sum up this post in one sentence it would be - Take responsibility for absolutely everything in your life; every thought, every feeling, every situation, every experience, every pain, every headache, every joy, every tear, every win, every loss, every unexpected event, every violation, every abuse, every accolade, every praise, every good day, every bad day, every everything. Claim it all. Own every bit of everything that happens in your life.

Ok, technically that’s 3 sentences, but we make our own rules here so the point stands.

Eve. Ry. Thing. Everything. Take responsibility for everything.

This is usually where people start to push back and say, “Wait, so when my cousin who’s 20 years older than me tried to kiss me in a bar and convince me it was ok to sleep with him when I was 19 because we’re only ‘half-cousins’ - that was my fault? What is wrong with you, Katie? You’re victim blaming. What a horrible thing to say!

And to them I say - you’re either open to hearing what I have to say or not. Stay and listen, or go and don’t listen. Either way, we’re still friends. Either way, I’m going to say what I believe.

At this point, if you’re on Team “It’s Not My Fault”, I’d like to point out that no one said anything about “fault” except you. I said take responsibility for what’s happened.

They. Are. Not. The. Same. Thing.

Let’s get into it.

Fault and Blame are a function of the same energy. It’s a perspective that looks backward to the past and tries to unravel all the moves that were made leading up to the infraction. It’s an energy of “Who did the wrong thing?” This often results in punishing the perpetrator, which is supposed to somehow at least make things better, if not completely resolved.

Of course, punishment doesn’t work. Just look at our prison system. It’s laughable, at best, and more like systematic genocide when one takes an honest look at it. Punishment doesn't get to the root of what caused the situation, nor does it help those affected to find their way through to the other side. What it does is perpetuate shame. Blame is just another way of shaming, and shame keeps us cowering in a dark corner afraid of the light.

So what’s the difference between blame and responsibility? Great question, I’m glad you asked!

There are a few things that stand out to me as I consider the difference between blame and responsibility. I acknowledge that many people use the terms interchangeably, and perhaps therein lies the issue.

“You’re to blame” = “It’s your responsibility to fix it”, right? That’s why we, as individuals, parents, and a society vehemently seek to find out who’s to blame; who’s fault is it? So we can hold them accountable, and make them “fix it”.

It’s my opinion that this lulls us into a false sense of security. And I’m not even sure if ‘security’ is the right word, because even after the culprit is caught and convicted, do we actually feel safe? Do we actually feel like we’ll never again be on the receiving end of something insidious, tragic, or even just painful or difficult?

I believe it’s more common to feel something along the lines of, “that particular person has been dealt with, but if one person will do that bad thing, someone else will, too.” So we begin to live in fear and always on guard; alert and waiting for the next person that we need to watch out for.

And of course, up to this point in the post I’ve been using examples of life situations and events that cause sadness, fear, angst, even trauma, but this applies equally to situations that cause minor discontent, inconvenience, or annoyance. At the end of the day, they all function the same.

What I’m getting at here is that instead of spending so much time figuring out who’s to blame and holding them accountable, what if we just took responsibility for moving our own life forward?

Perhaps there’s a time and place and circumstance where we go down the blame and accountability road, but when that is our first or even worse only action step, we’re in for a huge let down when it’s all over and we still feel powerless. Or we feel stuck and unable to move forward if no one is ever held responsible or takes accountability for whatever hurt, disrupted or bothered us. We wait for someone to get in trouble or admit they did wrong in the name of closure and “taking responsibility” for what happened.

But that’s not what helps us move forward. That’s not how we grow. That’s not how we feel powerful. And it’s certainly not how we find the strength and determination to go after what we want, regardless of the past.

Enter - taking responsibility for EVERYTHING! Because ‘taking responsibility’ does not mean accepting culpability. It does not mean accepting blame or shame. It does not mean you did something wrong, necessarily.

What it does mean, is that you are willing and believe yourself able to take charge of moving your life forward in the direction you want it to go.

It means that regardless of what’s happened to you, who did it, why they did it, how they did it, or any other such thing, you are willing to do what needs to be done to move away from the past and toward the future that you are designing for yourself. It means that you know deep down that you don’t need anyone to admit they were wrong, be held accountable or take responsibility for fixing things.

It means that you are taking charge of your own life and your own future, and using what you have and what you encounter along the way to propel your forward.

It means you fully accept that your power entirely exists within you. It means that you know that no one else taking blame, admitting fault, being punished, or held accountable will infuse you with some magic power to keep going or find happiness again. It means that you look inward, and ask questions like “what can I do next?” “What do I need to believe about myself in order to move towards what I want?” “Where is my power most strong right now, and how can I use it?”

Doing this means that we need to let go of trying to blame, get closure from others, hold others accountable, and expecting others to make amends or fix what they’ve broken. That path leads us in the exact opposite direction of where we want to go. That path takes us into the past and into the space of spinning our wheels on something that will never get us what we want, no matter how many people are blamed.

What we want, what we all want I believe, is to know our own power. To feel confident in wielding it. To feel the freedom that comes from not trying to extract our power from somewhere outside of us, but tapping into what already exists inside us.

When we are able to sit with our disappointment, our annoyance, our hurt, our fear, our angst, our trauma, and claim with conviction:

“Regardless of who’s to blame for these circumstances, I claim responsibility for what comes next,”

then, we are firmly rooted in our personal power. We are securely grounded in the truth of who we are and what we’re capable of.

In this place of personal responsibility, we cannot be victims. We are not at the mercy of anyone’s whim. We are not waiting or stuck. Instead, we are choosing for ourselves. We are capable of everything. We are smart enough. We are good enough. We are powerful beyond measure.

Letting go of blame and accountability for the past doesn’t mean that we have to move forward alone or without help or support. On the contrary, we are not meant to do life alone. And when I combine my personal power with your personal power, and my knowledge with your knowledge we are, without doubt, stronger together. As they say, when you put the flames from two candles together, they make one bigger, brighter flame.

We cannot fix what’s done while moving in a forward direction. We cannot move toward what we want and desire while trying to tie up loose ends of the past. There is no true value or success in spending time persecuting others, no matter what they’ve done. It’s an exercise in futility.

When we are focused on making people accountable for their wrong doing, we are siphoning our personal power onto them. And the irony in that, is that they can’t use our personal power for their benefit. It’s called personal power for a reason. Only you can use your power. So it’s wasted. They can’t use it. You can’t use it. You’re stuck in the past, and they’re wading through even more shame and persecution than they had before. Which also does not help them move forward toward something better for themself.

I do want to be clear that I’m not in any way suggesting that we should bypass our emotions; our hurt, anger, fear, frustration, etc. Those emotions are real and deserve to be seen and allowed. As someone who is an expert at intellectualizing my emotions rather than feeling and releasing them, I feel strongly that doing the emotional work, whether that’s talk therapy, somatic exercise, EMDR, whatever, is very important. Process and heal what you need to, just don’t make your healing dependent on someone else’s choices.

I’d also like to point out that sometimes the one we’re persecuting and blaming is ourselves. And like it or not, everything I’ve written above still applies if you’re blaming yourself. Let yourself off the hook and focus forward. You don’t need a public lashing before you’ve earned the right to move forward toward positive change or happiness. There’s no amount of self punishment that will end up feeling sufficient, because punishment doesn’t work.

Today I invite you to identify a relatively inconsequential event in your life where you recognize yourself as being stuck trying to place blame or get someone else to take accountability for. Please don’t choose the most difficult issue of your life. It’s ok to begin as a beginner. Just recognize where you’re siphoning a little bit of your personal power, and decide to reclaim it.

Actively choose to let go of the accountability seeking, let whoever it is off the hook, and refocus your attention toward what you desire. You’re not trying to accomplish your desire yet, just redirecting your power toward where you’re going, rather than where you’ve been. See how it feels. Notice what comes up for you. Journal about it, maybe.

Let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear from you in the comments section! ​

Blessings & Beach Days Forever,

Katie